Sword Art Online Alternate: Gun Gale Online

Without a doubt, this series is far better written than the original. I loved the abstract artwork of Pitohui. And now we know who the cute blonde in the combat helmet is. Specifically for this episode,

I've read the manga which has a real world scene with M and Pito(in bed). He's just as big in real life but she is possibly smaller than Llenn. As for who she is my money is on her being that singer Karen/Llenn likes.

@steelblaidd They have him meeting Karen in the real world in this episode. We know Karen is very tall for a Japanese woman. Height-wise, he's about the same height as Karen, but nowhere near as bulky as his GGO avatar. In stark contrast, the squad of Amazons turns out to be

@hatguy12 Without rewatching "Fan Letter", I can't remember how much real-world information Karen put into that letter. If your spoiler is correct, that would pretty well nail down Pito's real-world identity. I'm pretty sure that's who it is though.

Edit to add:
Even though Karen asked him at least twice, "M" never did answer her question about how he knew her name and address. Or did I miss that?

@Paul-Nebeling It was just a spectacular example of how not to sell a plot point, where they literally sat and talked for half an episode, telling us the entire plot, which was a contrived mess in the first place. Like, Pitohui really got slapped with the convoluted backstory stick, and I just don't like being told to care about something.

One thing I really like about this show is how it understands games, A player may exploit a glitch or mechanic (dead bodies are immortal and bullet lines only visible when your finger is over the trigger) or win because of a glitch (LLENN with immortal Scanner) but the game gets Patched (The Scanner is no longer an immortal object).

And the Bullet Lines thing is definitely something that probably would not get patched since it can separate the casuals from the pros.

@drone205 In that Light Novel podcast ep2 they were talking about how the SAO author was only a casual gamer so was pretty bad at game worlds/mechanics - this alt series seems to be worlds ahead on that one (is this all the different author's creation, or were they given the job of writing someone else's idea?)

@smashman42 from what I know, Sigsawa has full control over the story with Kawahara only supervising it so it keeps consistent with the main series. He's enough of a gun nutjob to make GGO shine, I doubt he'd need outside help.